It can be a little dangerous to correlate the amount of money put into interface research or funding of university research with Interface Usability. Many of the big commercial software developers conduct research in such a way as to justify their UI and it is well known that university research is often pulled toward the objectives of the fundholder. Bottom line with UI Usability is that no one interface will be all things to all people and the flexibility to provide an unconstrained user-customisable UI is (as far as I have seen) still an aspiration.

That companies put money into research projects to justify themselves and their products rather than improve them is new to me. But heck, you always learn something. What I know is that in work efficiency is everything and if a product has a confusing interface that makes people complain that eventually filters down to the manufacturer. I agree that not one interface satisfy all users. Kids demands kids interface, amateurs amateur and professionals professional interface.

Jmak